116-558: The concept of mingei ( 民芸 ) , variously translated into English as " folk craft ", " folk art " or "popular art", was developed from the mid-1920s in Japan by a philosopher and aesthete, Yanagi Sōetsu (1889–1961), together with a group of craftsmen, including the potters Hamada Shōji (1894–1978) and Kawai Kanjirō (1890–1966). As such, it was a conscious attempt to distinguish ordinary crafts and functional utensils (pottery, lacquerware, textiles, and so on) from "higher" forms of art – at
232-566: A "classical beauty" or said to possess a "classical beauty", whilst the foundations laid by Greek and Roman artists have also supplied the standard for male beauty and female beauty in western civilization as seen, for example, in the Winged Victory of Samothrace . During the Gothic era, the classical aesthetical canon of beauty was rejected as sinful. Later, Renaissance and Humanist thinkers rejected this view, and considered beauty to be
348-527: A "colonialist view of history". Yanagi defined "beauty of sadness" (悲哀の美, hiai no bi ) as the "innate, original beauty created by the Korean race" (民族の固有の美, minzoku no koyū no bi ) and expressed his belief that a long history of foreign invasions of Korea was reflected in Korean art, and especially in the "sad and lonely" lines of its pottery. Such a theory has been criticised by Korean scholars as an "aesthetic of colonialism ". Folk craft A handicraft
464-691: A "communal" society, where people cooperated with one another. Such cooperation bound not only one man to another, but man to nature. Folk crafts were in this respect "communal arts". However, consumer demand for mingei objects led to increased mechanisation of production processes which, in themselves, relied far less on cooperative work and labour exchanges than they had in the past. (2) Mechanisation also led to less reliance on, and use of, natural materials – something that Yanagi had insisted upon as essential to his concept of beauty – something which also deprived modern mingei of its specifically "local" qualities. (3) Both media exposure and consumer demand encouraged
580-536: A "standard of beauty"; (2) the Folk Craft Association, which promotes Yanagi's ideals throughout Japan and publishes two monthly magazines; and (3) the folk craft shop, Takumi (工), which acts as a major folk craft retail sales outlet in Tokyo. The philosophical pillar of mingei is "ordinary people's crafts" (民衆的な工芸, minshūteki na kōgei ). Yanagi's theoretical and aesthetic proposition was that beauty
696-420: A craft object should be seen for what it is, without any prior knowledge or intellectual analysis coming between object and onlooker. It thereby directly communicated the inherent beauty of that same object. If chokkan was an "absolute foot rule", it also defied logical explanation and was, therefore, very much part of his "spiritual" approach to aesthetics and the appreciation of folk craft beauty. But chokkan
812-558: A criticism of modern industrialized society. In this respect, he echoed similar theories put forward in other industrialising countries – notably those of William Morris and followers of the Arts and Crafts movement in the United Kingdom. Both men argued there was a close connection between the incentive for profit and the quality of work produced under a capitalist system of wage labour relations. But, whereas Morris's immediate enemy
928-446: A fact that may subconsciously condition males choosing mates. In 2008, other commentators have suggested that this preference may not be universal. For instance, in some non-Western cultures in which women have to do work such as finding food, men tend to have preferences for higher waist-hip ratios. Exposure to the thin ideal in mass media, such as fashion magazines, directly correlates with body dissatisfaction, low self-esteem, and
1044-566: A few words of common tourist languages. There are also specialty markets such as: According to the Vietnam Handicrafts Export Association (VIETCRAFT), Vietnam's handicrafts export turnover in 2023 reached US$ 2.2 billion, up 10.5% over 2022. The United States is Vietnam's largest export market, accounting for 35% of total export turnover. Vietnam's handicrafts industry currently has about 600 villages, with over 10 million direct workers. Wickerwork
1160-544: A few years), spreading rapidly among the crafting population as everyone emulates the first examples, then their popularity wanes until a later resurgence. The Arts and Crafts movement originated as a late-19th-century design reform and social movement principally in Europe, North America and Australia, and continues today. Its proponents are motivated by the ideals of movement founders such as William Morris and John Ruskin , who proposed that in pre-industrial societies, such as
1276-417: A general definition of beauty and several authors take the opposite claim that such laws cannot be formulated, as part of their definition of beauty. A very common element in many conceptions of beauty is its relation to pleasure . Hedonism makes this relation part of the definition of beauty by holding that there is a necessary connection between pleasure and beauty, e.g. that for an object to be beautiful
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#17327718338051392-519: A great good, God dispenses it even to the wicked." Classical philosophy and sculptures of men and women produced according to the Greek philosophers ' tenets of ideal human beauty were rediscovered in Renaissance Europe, leading to a re-adoption of what became known as a "classical ideal". In terms of female human beauty, a woman whose appearance conforms to these tenets is still called
1508-494: A harmonious interplay between the faculties of understanding and imagination. A further question for hedonists is how to explain the relation between beauty and pleasure. This problem is akin to the Euthyphro dilemma : is something beautiful because we enjoy it or do we enjoy it because it is beautiful? Identity theorists solve this problem by denying that there is a difference between beauty and pleasure: they identify beauty, or
1624-444: A limited geographic area. Many handcrafters use natural, even entirely indigenous, materials while others may prefer modern, non-traditional materials, and even upcycle industrial materials. The individual artisanship of a handcrafted item is the paramount criterion; those made by mass production or machines are not handicraft goods. Seen as developing the skills and creative interests of students, generally and sometimes towards
1740-423: A loving attitude toward them or of their function. Beauty, together with art and taste, is the main subject of aesthetics , one of the major branches of philosophy. Beauty is usually categorized as an aesthetic property besides other properties, like grace, elegance or the sublime . As a positive aesthetic value, beauty is contrasted with ugliness as its negative counterpart. Beauty is often listed as one of
1856-472: A particular craft or trade, handicrafts are often integrated into educational systems, both informally and formally. Most crafts require the development of skill and the application of patience but can be learned by virtually anyone. Like folk art , handicraft output often has cultural and/or religious significance, and increasingly may have a political message as well, as in craftivism . Many crafts become very popular for brief periods of time (a few months, or
1972-507: A period of years in exchange for low wages. By the time their training was complete, they were well equipped to set up in trade for themselves, earning their living with the skill that could be traded directly within the community, often for goods and services. The Industrial Revolution and the increasing mechanization of production processes gradually reduced or eliminated many of the roles professional craftspeople played, and today many handicrafts are increasingly seen, especially when no longer
2088-552: A process akin to a category mistake , one treats one's subjective pleasure as an objective property of the beautiful thing. Other conceptions include defining beauty in terms of a loving or longing attitude toward the beautiful object or in terms of its usefulness or function. In 1871, functionalist Charles Darwin explained beauty as result of accumulative sexual selection in "The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex". The classical Greek noun that best translates to
2204-435: A result of publicity by the media — to almost everyone in Japan. This resulted in enormous consumer demand for hand-made folk crafts, which many people thought included such things as tooth-picks and log cabins, as well as more mainstream crafts. This demand came to be labelled the " mingei boom" and continued until the mid-70s, since when it has gradually declined until becoming almost irrelevant to contemporary Japanese in
2320-528: A rise in an interest in beauty as a philosophical subject. For example, Scottish philosopher Francis Hutcheson argued that beauty is " unity in variety and variety in unity". He wrote that beauty was neither purely subjective nor purely objective—it could be understood not as "any Quality suppos'd to be in the Object, which should of itself be beautiful, without relation to any Mind which perceives it: For Beauty, like other Names of sensible Ideas, properly denotes
2436-661: A short period of time. Handicraft production is a small–scale production of products using manual labor. It was especially common in the Middle Ages , during the era of the Industrial Revolution it was mainly supplanted by mass production , however, it still exists for the production of goods such as luxury goods . The "handmade effect" is a phenomenon where consumers exhibit a preference for products that are crafted by human labor rather than produced through automated or robotic processes . This preference
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#17327718338052552-404: A similar sort of "art form" in Japan. On returning home, therefore, he became interested in his own country's rich cultural heritage and started collecting "vanishing" craft items. The objects in his collection included woodwork , lacquer ware , pottery and textiles – from Okinawa and Hokkaidō (Ainu), as well as from mainland Japan . In certain important respects, therefore, what became
2668-424: A thing designed according to some principle and fitted for a purpose. He distinguished "free beauty" from "merely adherent beauty", explaining that "the first presupposes no concept of what the object ought to be; the second does presuppose such a concept and the perfection of the object in accordance therewith." By this definition, free beauty is found in seashells and wordless music; adherent beauty in buildings and
2784-431: A thing in itself. The ascent of love begins with one's own body, then secondarily, in appreciating beauty in another's body, thirdly beauty in the soul, which cognates to beauty in the mind in the modern sense, fourthly beauty in institutions, laws and activities, fifthly beauty in knowledge, the sciences, and finally to lastly love beauty itself, which translates to the original Greek language term as auto to kalon . In
2900-453: A virtuous personality to be the greatest of beauties: In his philosophy, "a neighborhood with a ren man in it is a beautiful neighborhood." Confucius's student Zeng Shen expressed a similar idea: "few men could see the beauty in some one whom they dislike." Mencius considered "complete truthfulness" to be beauty. Zhu Xi said: "When one has strenuously implemented goodness until it is filled to completion and has accumulated truth, then
3016-430: A wide range of different standards for beauty. A strong indicator of physical beauty is " averageness ". When images of human faces are averaged together to form a composite image, they become progressively closer to the "ideal" image and are perceived as more attractive. This was first noticed in 1883, when Francis Galton overlaid photographic composite images of the faces of vegetarians and criminals to see if there
3132-407: Is a mind-independent feature of things. On this account, the beauty of a landscape is independent of who perceives it or whether it is perceived at all. Disagreements may be explained by an inability to perceive this feature, sometimes referred to as a "lack of taste". Subjectivism, on the other hand, denies the mind-independent existence of beauty. Influential for the development of this position
3248-515: Is a traditional handicraft industry, based on the use of two basic materials, bamboo and rattan . Vietnam currently has 893 villages specializing in wickerwork, accounting for 24% of the total number of villages, including 647 bamboo and rattan villages and 246 straw and water hyacinth villages. Beauty Beauty is commonly described as a feature of objects that makes them pleasurable to perceive. Such objects include landscapes, sunsets, humans and works of art. Beauty, art and taste are
3364-569: Is a traditional main sector of craft making and applies to a wide range of creative and design activities that are related to making things with one's hands and skill, including work with textiles , moldable and rigid materials, paper, plant fibers, clay, etc. One of the oldest handicraft is Dhokra ; this is a sort of metal casting that has been used in India for over 5,000 years and is still used. In Iranian Baluchistan , women still make red ware hand-made pottery with dotted ornaments, much similar to
3480-626: Is also applied, especially in the United States and mostly to hobbyists' and children's output rather than items crafted for daily use, but this distinction is not formal, and the term is easily confused with the Arts and Crafts design movement, which is in fact as practical as it is aesthetic. Handicraft has its roots in the rural crafts —the material-goods necessities—of ancient civilizations, and many specific crafts have been practiced for centuries, while others are modern inventions or popularizations of crafts which were originally practiced in
3596-689: Is associated with activity in the medial orbitofrontal cortex . This approach of localizing the processing of beauty in one brain region has received criticism within the field. Philosopher and novelist Umberto Eco wrote On Beauty: A History of a Western Idea (2004) and On Ugliness (2007). The narrator of his novel The Name of the Rose follows Aquinas in declaring: "three things concur in creating beauty: first of all integrity or perfection, and for this reason, we consider ugly all incomplete things; then proper proportion or consonance; and finally clarity and light", before going on to say "the sight of
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3712-569: Is difficult to give a general and detailed description of what is meant by "harmony between parts" and raises the suspicion that defining beauty through harmony results in exchanging one unclear term for another one. Some attempts have been made to dissolve this suspicion by searching for laws of beauty , like the golden ratio . 18th century philosopher Alexander Baumgarten , for example, saw laws of beauty in analogy with laws of nature and believed that they could be discovered through empirical research. As of 2003, these attempts have failed to find
3828-406: Is driven, in large part, by the perception that handmade products symbolically "contain love ." The handmade effect is influenced by two key factors. Firstly, consumers express stronger intentions to purchase handmade products when buying gifts for loved ones, compared to more distant recipients. Secondly, they are willing to pay a higher price for handmade gifts when the purchase is motivated by
3944-508: Is essential to all beautiful things. Classical conceptions define beauty in terms of the relation between the beautiful object as a whole and its parts: the parts should stand in the right proportion to each other and thus compose an integrated harmonious whole. Hedonist conceptions see a necessary connection between pleasure and beauty, e.g. that for an object to be beautiful is for it to cause disinterested pleasure. Other conceptions include defining beautiful objects in terms of their value, of
4060-599: Is explained not only by economic and natural–geographical factors, but also by the support and encouragement of the handicraft industry from the state. There are almost as many variations on the theme of handicrafts as there are crafters with time on their hands, but they can be broken down into a number of categories: Handicrafts are often made for home use and decor. If sold, they are sold in direct sales , gift shops , public markets , and online shopping . In developing countries, handicrafts are sold to locals and as souvenirs to tourists. Sellers tend to speak at least
4176-411: Is for it to cause pleasure or that the experience of beauty is always accompanied by pleasure. This account is sometimes labeled as "aesthetic hedonism" in order to distinguish it from other forms of hedonism . An influential articulation of this position comes from Thomas Aquinas , who treats beauty as "that which pleases in the very apprehension of it". Immanuel Kant explains this pleasure through
4292-458: Is no general agreement on how "ideal observers" are to be defined, but it is usually assumed that they are experienced judges of beauty with a fully developed sense of taste. This suggests an indirect way of solving the antinomy of taste : instead of looking for necessary and sufficient conditions of beauty itself, one can learn to identify the qualities of good critics and rely on their judgments. This approach only works if unanimity among experts
4408-506: Is particularly pronounced for products with higher symbolic value, where expressing one's beliefs and personality holds greater significance. Consumers , especially in contexts emphasizing symbolic consumption, have a stronger motivation for uniqueness and associate human labor more closely with product uniqueness. In product categories where mechanical production is common, consumers are more attracted to products labeled as handmade. The positive handmade effect on product attractiveness
4524-528: Is possible despite the fact that beauty is a mind-dependent property, dependent not on an individual but a group. A closely related theory sees beauty as a secondary or response-dependent property . On one such account, an object is beautiful "if it causes pleasure by virtue of its aesthetic properties". The problem that different people respond differently can be addressed by combining response-dependence theories with so-called ideal-observer theories : it only matters how an ideal observer would respond. There
4640-473: Is said to be "in the eye of the beholder". It has been argued that the ability on the side of the subject needed to perceive and judge beauty, sometimes referred to as the "sense of taste", can be trained and that the verdicts of experts coincide in the long run. This suggests the standards of validity of judgments of beauty are intersubjective, i.e. dependent on a group of judges, rather than fully subjective or objective. Conceptions of beauty aim to capture what
4756-484: Is sometimes discussed under the label " antinomy of taste". It has prompted various philosophers to seek a unified theory that can take all these intuitions into account. One promising route to solve this problem is to move from subjective to intersubjective theories , which hold that the standards of validity of judgments of taste are intersubjective or dependent on a group of judges rather than objective. This approach tries to explain how genuine disagreement about beauty
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4872-465: Is sometimes referred to as the "antinomy of taste". Adherents of both sides have suggested that a certain faculty, commonly called a sense of taste , is necessary for making reliable judgments about beauty. David Hume , for example, suggests that this faculty can be trained and that the verdicts of experts coincide in the long run. Beauty is mainly discussed in relation to concrete objects accessible to sensory perception. It has been suggested that
4988-558: Is that Yanagi introduced Buddhist thinking into his philosophy (especially that of Daisetsu Suzuki and Kitarō Nishida ) – something completely lacking in the British Arts and Crafts movement. Ultimately, the main difference between Morris and Yanagi might best be summarised as a demand by one (Morris) to change the nature of society, and by the other (Yanagi) to change the nature of individualism. Yuko Kikuchi (菊池優子) has further argued that power relations and ultra-nationalism lie at
5104-480: Is true for all cases. For example, a cold jaded critic may still be a good judge of beauty because of her years of experience but lack the joy that initially accompanied her work. One way to avoid this objection is to allow responses to beautiful things to lack pleasure while insisting that all beautiful things merit pleasure, that aesthetic pleasure is the only appropriate response to them. G. E. Moore explained beauty in regard to intrinsic value as "that of which
5220-504: The National Treasures of Japan and individual artist-craftsmen – popularly known as "national treasures" ( ningen kokuhō , [人間国宝]) – who were deemed to be holders of important cultural skills ( jūyō mukei bunkazai , [重要無形文化財]). The spread of Yanagi's ideas was helped by these developments so that, by about 1960, the concept of mingei had become known not just to a small group of people living in Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka, but — as
5336-473: The Perception of some mind; ... however we generally imagine that there is something in the Object just like our Perception." Immanuel Kant believed that there could be no "universal criterion of the beautiful" and that the experience of beauty is subjective, but that an object is judged to be beautiful when it seems to display "purposiveness"; that is, when its form is perceived to have the character of
5452-579: The absence of genetic or acquired defects . Since the 1970s there has been increasing evidence that a preference for beautiful faces emerges early in infancy, and is probably innate, and that the rules by which attractiveness is established are similar across different genders and cultures. A feature of beautiful women which has been explored by researchers is a waist–hip ratio of approximately 0.70. As of 2004, physiologists had shown that women with hourglass figures were more fertile than other women because of higher levels of certain female hormones,
5568-408: The market . Mostly these were household products: dishes, furniture, jewelry, souvenirs, clothes, shoes. However, over time, other goods, such as weapons , began to go on sale. In pre–revolutionary Russia , handicraft production was quite widespread: about 30% of all manufactured products were produced by handicraft methods. Products were sold at fairs , and barter exchange was widespread. With
5684-470: The 2000s. Nevertheless, craftsmen who had been struggling to make ends meet before and just after the Pacific War , suddenly found themselves comparatively well-off; potters in particular benefited financially from the "boom". With all the publicity surrounding folk crafts, new kilns were set up everywhere. So far as the purists were concerned, however, the day of the "instant potter" had come to accompany
5800-500: The 4,000-year-old pottery tradition of Kalpurgan, an archaeological site near the village. Usually, the term is applied to traditional techniques of creating items (whether for personal use or as products) that are both practical and aesthetic. Handicraft industries are those that produce things with hands to meet the needs of the people in their locality without using machines. Collective terms for handicrafts include artisanry , crafting , and handcrafting . The term arts and crafts
5916-548: The English-language words "beauty" or "beautiful" was κάλλος , kallos , and the adjective was καλός, kalos . This is also translated as "good" or "of fine quality" and thus has a broader meaning than mere physical or material beauty. Similarly, kallos was used differently from the English word beauty in that it first and foremost applied to humans and bears an erotic connotation. The Koine Greek word for beautiful
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#17327718338056032-477: The European Middle Ages , people had achieved fulfillment through the creative process of handicrafts. This was held up in contrast to what was perceived to be the alienating effects of industrial labor. These activities were called crafts because originally many of them were professions under the guild system. Adolescents were apprenticed to a master craftsman and refined their skills over
6148-470: The Idea ( Form ) above all other Ideas. Platonic thought synthesized beauty with the divine . Scruton (cited: Konstan) states Plato states of the idea of beauty, of it (the idea), being something inviting desirousness (c.f seducing ), and, promotes an intellectual renunciation (c.f. denouncing ) of desire. For Alexander Nehamas , it is only the locating of desire to which the sense of beauty exists, in
6264-753: The Japan Folk Crafts Museum ( Nihon Mingeikan , [日本民芸館]) and three years later, in 1939, launched a second magazine, Mingei (民藝). This remains the official organ of the Japan Folk Craft Association ( Nihon Mingei Kyōkai [日本民芸協会]), founded in 1931. There are, therefore, three manifestations of the Folk Craft Movement: (1) the Folk Craft Museum, which exhibits objects that are seen to be truly " mingei " and which Yanagi intended should establish
6380-874: The Japanese Folk Craft Movement owed much to Yanagi's early interest in Korea, where he established a Chōsen Folk Art Museum in one of the old palace buildings in Seoul in 1924. In the following year – after considerable discussion with two potter friends, Hamada Shōji and Kawai Kanjirō – the phrase that they coined to describe the craftsman's work was mingei (民藝). This was a hybrid term, formed from minshū (民衆), meaning "common people", and kōgei (工藝), or "craft". Yanagi himself translated it into English as "folk craft" (not "folk art"), since he wished to stop people from conceiving of mingei as an individually-inspired "high" art ( bijutsu [美術]). Realising that
6496-482: The Japanese way of viewing and appreciating art and beauty in everyday crafts. At the same time, however, – and by his own admission – his theory was not simply a craft movement based on aesthetics, but "a spiritual movement" in which craftsmen should work according to ethical and religious ideals, if beauty was to be achieved. In this respect, it may be argued that he chose to express his vision of "spirituality" through
6612-500: The PQD is strongly present in the object. Elaine Scarry argues that beauty is related to justice. Beauty is also studied by psychologists and neuroscientists in the field of experimental aesthetics and neuroesthetics respectively. Psychological theories see beauty as a form of pleasure . Correlational findings support the view that more beautiful objects are also more pleasing. Some studies suggest that higher experienced beauty
6728-421: The admiring contemplation is good in itself". This definition connects beauty to experience while managing to avoid some of the problems usually associated with subjectivist positions since it allows that things may be beautiful even if they are never experienced. Another subjectivist theory of beauty comes from George Santayana , who suggested that we project pleasure onto the things we call "beautiful". So in
6844-476: The appearance of it, with the experience of aesthetic pleasure. Hedonists usually restrict and specify the notion of pleasure in various ways in order to avoid obvious counterexamples. One important distinction in this context is the difference between pure and mixed pleasure . Pure pleasure excludes any form of pain or unpleasant feeling while the experience of mixed pleasure can include unpleasant elements. But beauty can involve mixed pleasure, for example, in
6960-467: The beautiful implies peace". Mike Phillips has described Umberto Eco's On Beauty as "incoherent" and criticized him for focusing only on Western European history and devoting none of his book to Eastern European, Asian, or African history. Amy Finnerty described Eco's work On Ugliness favorably. Chinese philosophy has traditionally not made a separate discipline of the philosophy of beauty. Confucius identified beauty with goodness, and considered
7076-476: The beauty of a thing supervenes on the sensory features of this thing. It has also been proposed that abstract objects like stories or mathematical proofs can be beautiful. Beauty plays a central role in works of art and nature. An influential distinction among beautiful things, according to Immanuel Kant , is that between adherent beauty ( pulchritudo adhaerens ) and free beauty ( pulchritudo vaga ). A thing has adherent beauty if its beauty depends on
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#17327718338057192-712: The beauty will reside within it and will not depend on externals." The word "beauty" is often used as a countable noun to describe a beautiful woman. The characterization of a person as "beautiful", whether on an individual basis or by community consensus, is often based on some combination of inner beauty , which includes psychological factors such as personality , intelligence , grace , politeness , charisma , integrity , congruence and elegance , and outer beauty (i.e. physical attractiveness ) which includes physical attributes which are valued on an aesthetic basis. Standards of beauty have changed over time, based on changing cultural values. Historically, paintings show
7308-652: The beginning of industrialisation and collectivization of the Soviet Union, the handicraft mode of production was declared "the highest degree of oppression of the working people" and ceased to exist in almost all spheres of the Soviet economy except on an informal basis. Some state economies, such as that of Vietnam , are largely based on handicraft production. For example, in the 1950s in North Vietnam , there were more than 100,000 handicraft enterprises. In
7424-415: The case of a beautifully tragic story, which is why mixed pleasure is usually allowed in hedonist conceptions of beauty. Another problem faced by hedonist theories is that we take pleasure from many things that are not beautiful. One way to address this issue is to associate beauty with a special type of pleasure: aesthetic or disinterested pleasure . A pleasure is disinterested if it is indifferent to
7540-631: The classical standard of beauty, as sublime. The 20th century saw an increasing rejection of beauty by artists and philosophers alike, culminating in postmodernism 's anti-aesthetics. This is despite beauty being a central concern of one of postmodernism's main influences, Friedrich Nietzsche , who argued that the Will to Power was the Will to Beauty. In the aftermath of postmodernism's rejection of beauty, thinkers have returned to beauty as an important value. American analytic philosopher Guy Sircello proposed his New Theory of Beauty as an effort to reaffirm
7656-443: The concept belonged often within the discipline of mathematics. An idea of spiritual beauty emerged during the classical period , beauty was something embodying divine goodness, while the demonstration of behaviour which might be classified as beautiful, from an inner state of morality which is aligned to the good . The writing of Xenophon shows a conversation between Socrates and Aristippus . Socrates discerned differences in
7772-404: The conception of the beautiful, for example, in inanimate objects, the effectiveness of execution of design was a deciding factor on the perception of beauty in something. By the account of Xenophon, Socrates found beauty congruent with that to which was defined as the morally good, in short, he thought beauty coincident with the good . Beauty is a subject of Plato in his work Symposium . In
7888-427: The conception or function of this thing, unlike free or absolute beauty. Examples of adherent beauty include an ox which is beautiful as an ox but not beautiful as a horse or a photograph which is beautiful, because it depicts a beautiful building but that lacks beauty generally speaking because of its low quality. Judgments of beauty seem to occupy an intermediary position between objective judgments, e.g. concerning
8004-467: The considerations of Plato. Aristotle defines beauty in Metaphysics as having order, symmetry and definiteness which the mathematical sciences exhibit to a special degree . He saw a relationship between the beautiful ( to kalon ) and virtue, arguing that "Virtue aims at the beautiful." In De Natura Deorum , Cicero wrote: "the splendour and beauty of creation", in respect to this, and all
8120-491: The core of the formation of mingei theory. When Yanagi put forward his "criterion of beauty in Japan" (日本における美の標準, nihon ni okeru bi no hyōjun ) in 1927, he was doing so during a period of rising militarism in Japan. The very Japaneseness of mingei , therefore, and Yanagi's failure to recognise the influence of William Morris on his thinking, may be seen to echo the cultural nationalism of Japanese intellectuals at that time. In addition, he applied his "criterion of beauty" to
8236-659: The crafts of the Okinawans and the Ainu in the Japanese peripheries, and to those of the colonies including Korea , Taiwan and Manchuria . Mingei theory, therefore, far from being an Oriental theory, is a "hybridization" and "appropriation" of Occidental ideas such as those of William Morris (1834–1896). Whereas in Leach's view, he had helped Japanese artists to rediscover their original, Oriental culture, Japanese themselves applied Orientalism to their own art and projected
8352-463: The craftsman should leave nature to do the creating; salvation came from outside oneself, from what Yanagi called "self surrender" ( tarikidō , [他力道]). Tariki was not denial of the self so much as freedom from the self. Just as an Amidha Buddhist believed he could be saved by reciting the nenbutsu prayer and denying his or her self, so the craftsman could attain a "pure land of beauty" by surrendering his self to nature. No craftsman had within himself
8468-402: The desire to convey love rather than simply acquiring the best-performing product. The handicraft method of production has been used by people since ancient times. Initially, people engaged in handicraft production aimed to satisfy the needs of their own economy, however, with the development of commodity–money relations , an increasing number of goods produced by them began to be supplied to
8584-446: The development of eating disorders among female viewers. Further, the widening gap between individual body sizes and societal ideals continues to breed anxiety among young girls as they grow, highlighting the dangerous nature of beauty standards in society. A study using Chinese immigrants and Hispanic , Black and White American citizens found that their ideals of female beauty were not significantly different. Participants in
8700-528: The early 1970s, even before the end of the war , handicraft production provided about half of all the products of the local industry and almost a third of the total industrial production of the republic. By 1977, after the reunification of Vietnam, there were 700,000 handicraftsmen in South Vietnam . Handicraft production in Nepal withstands competition with industrial production and foreign goods, which
8816-428: The emergence of the artist-craftsman ( geijutsuka , [芸術家]) intent on making money, and to the gradual disappearance of the less profit-motivated "unknown craftsman". Consequently, (4) mingei as "folk craft " gradually came to be seen as mingei as "folk art ". (For further analysis, see) In the light of Yanagi's emphasis that beauty is derived from 'nature' and 'cooperation', it is not surprising to find in his works
8932-485: The establishment of the Folk Craft Movement (日本民芸運動) in 1926, it really only began with publication of this magazine, and the number of Yanagi's followers increased considerably as a result of their reading its contents. In 1952, Kōgei was absorbed by a second magazine Mingei (民藝, first published in 1939). In 1936, with financial assistance from a few wealthy Japanese businessmen, Yanagi was able to set up
9048-470: The existence of the beautiful object or if it did not arise owing to an antecedent desire through means-end reasoning. For example, the joy of looking at a beautiful landscape would still be valuable if it turned out that this experience was an illusion, which would not be true if this joy was due to seeing the landscape as a valuable real estate opportunity. Opponents of hedonism usually concede that many experiences of beauty are pleasurable but deny that this
9164-454: The facets of reality resulting from creation, he postulated these to be a reason to see the existence of a God as creator . In the Middle Ages , Catholic philosophers like Thomas Aquinas included beauty among the transcendental attributes of being . In his Summa Theologica , Aquinas described the three conditions of beauty as: integritas (wholeness), consonantia (harmony and proportion), and claritas (a radiance and clarity that makes
9280-541: The final state, auto to kalon and truth are united as one. There is the sense in the text, concerning love and beauty they both co-exist but are still independent or, in other words, mutually exclusive, since love does not have beauty since it seeks beauty. The work toward the end provides a description of beauty in a negative sense. Plato also discusses beauty in his work Phaedrus , and identifies Alcibiades as beautiful in Parmenides . He considered beauty to be
9396-545: The form of a thing apparent to the mind). In the Gothic Architecture of the High and Late Middle Ages , light was considered the most beautiful revelation of God , which was heralded in design. Examples are the stained glass of Gothic Cathedrals including Notre-Dame de Paris and Chartres Cathedral . St. Augustine said of beauty "Beauty is indeed a good gift of God; but that the good may not think it
9512-462: The general public needed to be educated in his understanding of the beauty of Japanese crafts, Yanagi set about propagating his views in a series of articles, books and lectures, and his first complete work Kōgei no Michi (工藝の道, The Way of Crafts ) was published in 1928. In 1931, he started a magazine Kōgei (工藝, Crafts ) in which he, and a close circle of friends who thought like him, were able to air their views. Although Yanagi had formally declared
9628-435: The general public, and are constructed from materials with histories that exceed the boundaries of Western "fine art" tradition, such as ceramics , glass , textiles , metal and wood . These products are produced within a specific community of practice , and while they mostly differ from the products produced within the communities of art and design, the boundaries often overlap, resulting in hybrid objects. Additionally, as
9744-523: The human body. The Romantic poets, too, became highly concerned with the nature of beauty, with John Keats arguing in Ode on a Grecian Urn that: In the Romantic period, Edmund Burke postulated a difference between beauty in its classical meaning and the sublime . The concept of the sublime, as explicated by Burke and Kant , suggested viewing Gothic art and architecture, though not in accordance with
9860-401: The interpretation and validation of art is frequently a matter of context, an audience may perceive handcrafted objects as art objects when these objects are viewed within an art context, such as in a museum or in a position of prominence in one's home. Simple "arts and crafts" projects are a common elementary and middle school activity in both mainstream and alternative education systems around
9976-406: The main subjects of aesthetics , one of the fields of study within philosophy . As a positive aesthetic value, it is contrasted with ugliness as its negative counterpart. One difficulty in understanding beauty is that it has both objective and subjective aspects: it is seen as a property of things but also as depending on the emotional response of observers. Because of its subjective side, beauty
10092-408: The mainstay of a formal vocational trade , as a form of hobby , folk art and sometimes fine art . The term handicrafts can also refer to the products themselves of such artisanal efforts, that require specialized knowledge, maybe highly technical in their execution, require specialized equipment and/or facilities to produce, involve manual labor or a blue-collar work ethic, are accessible to
10208-438: The mass and shape of a grapefruit, and subjective likes, e.g. concerning whether the grapefruit tastes good. Judgments of beauty differ from the former because they are based on subjective feelings rather than objective perception. But they also differ from the latter because they lay claim on universal correctness. This tension is also reflected in common language. On the one hand, we talk about beauty as an objective feature of
10324-583: The materials that surround us for economical, cultural and environmental purposes. Secondary schools and college and university art departments increasingly provide elective options for more handicraft-based arts, in addition to formal " fine arts ", a distinction that continues to fade throughout the years, especially with the rise of studio craft , i.e. the use of traditional handicrafts techniques by professional fine artists. Many community centers and schools run evening or day classes and workshops, for adults and children, offering to teach basic craft skills in
10440-477: The medium of folk crafts and was, as a result, concerned with how folk crafts were made, rather than with these crafts as objects in themselves. Provided that they were made according to a certain set of rules laid down by himself, they would naturally accord with his concept of "beauty". Yanagi's main emphasis was on beauty which, in his opinion, was unchanging, created by an immutable spirit. Sung period ceramics , or medieval Gothic architecture were products of
10556-440: The other "instants" of everyday life in Japan – coffee, noodles and geisha . The average craftsman, they said, was interested in mingei for the money that was to be made from it, rather than for its beauty. It was little more than an urban elitist fad. The mingei boom led to a number of paradoxes affecting Yanagi's original theory of folk crafts. (1) Yanagi had argued that beauty would "be born" (rather than "created") only in
10672-475: The parts should stand in the right proportion to each other and thus compose an integrated harmonious whole. On this account, which found its most explicit articulation in the Italian Renaissance , the beauty of a human body, for example, depends, among other things, on the right proportion of the different parts of the body and on the overall symmetry. One problem with this conception is that it
10788-598: The power to create beauty; the beauty that came from "self surrender" was incomparably greater than that of any work of art produced by "individual genius". Many of Japan's traditional ways were destroyed following the country's defeat in the Second World War . The outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 led to the Japanese Government instituting a system designed to protect what it considered to be
10904-407: The presence of beauty in universal terms, which is, as existing in a cosmological state, they observed beauty in the heavens . They saw a strong connection between mathematics and beauty. In particular, they noted that objects proportioned according to the golden ratio seemed more attractive. The classical concept of beauty is one that exhibits perfect proportion (Wolfflin). In this context,
11020-432: The product of rational order and harmonious proportions. Renaissance artists and architects (such as Giorgio Vasari in his "Lives of Artists") criticised the Gothic period as irrational and barbarian. This point of view of Gothic art lasted until Romanticism, in the 19th century. Vasari aligned himself to the classical notion and thought of beauty as defined as arising from proportion and order. The Age of Reason saw
11136-413: The same Orientalism onto the art of other Far Eastern countries like Korea. Kikuchi terms this occidentalist phenomenon "Oriental Orientalism", while Moeran has referred to it as "inverse orientalism, as well as to "counter-orientalism" tendencies found in Japanese society more generally. In this context, Yanagi's Korea and its Art , in particular, has been severely criticised by Korean intellectuals as
11252-419: The same object may produce very different ideas in distinct observers. The notion of "taste" can still be used to explain why different people disagree about what is beautiful, but there is no objectively right or wrong taste, there are just different tastes. The problem with both the objectivist and the subjectivist position in their extreme form is that each has to deny some intuitions about beauty. This issue
11368-443: The same spirit; "true" man was unchanging, unaffected by cultural or historical background. The present and the past were linked by beauty. In order to appreciate such beauty, argued Yanagi, one should not allow previous knowledge, prejudice, or subjectivity to cloud one's judgement. This could be achieved by means of what has been variously translated as "intuition", "the seeing eye", and "direct perception" ( chokkan , [直観]), whereby
11484-709: The similarities between his and Morris's work are too many to be ignored. As to when and how he came across Morris's ideas, however, is not so clear. Brian Moeran has argued that two of Yanagi's closest friends, Bernard Leach (1887-1989) and Kenkichi Tomimoto (富本憲吉) (1886-1963), both potters, introduced him to Morris's ideas, but Yanagi was already deeply steeped in Western science, philosophy, literature and art, and numerous articles in Japanese had already been published on Ruskin and Morris before Yanagi outlined his mingei ideas. Nevertheless, similarities in thought should not be interpreted as being identical. One major difference
11600-437: The status of beauty as an important philosophical concept. He rejected the subjectivism of Kant and sought to identify the properties inherent in an object that make it beautiful. He called qualities such as vividness, boldness, and subtlety "properties of qualitative degree" (PQDs) and stated that a PQD makes an object beautiful if it is not—and does not create the appearance of—"a property of deficiency, lack, or defect"; and if
11716-417: The three fundamental concepts of human understanding besides truth and goodness . Objectivists or realists see beauty as an objective or mind-independent feature of beautiful things, which is denied by subjectivists . The source of this debate is that judgments of beauty seem to be based on subjective grounds, namely our feelings, while claiming universal correctness at the same time. This tension
11832-552: The time much admired by people during a period when Japan was going through rapid westernisation, industrialisation, and urban growth. In some ways, therefore, mingei may be seen as a reaction to Japan's rapid modernisation processes. As a young man, Yanagi developed a liking for Joseon (1392–1910) ceramics, and in 1916, made his first trip to Korea . There he started to collect items, especially pottery, made by local Korean craftsmen. Realising that Yi Dynasty wares had been made by "nameless craftsmen", Yanagi felt that there had to be
11948-400: The work, the high priestess Diotima describes how beauty moves out from a core singular appreciation of the body to outer appreciations via loved ones, to the world in its state of culture and society (Wright). In other words, Diotoma gives to Socrates an explanation of how love should begin with erotic attachment , and end with the transcending of the physical to an appreciation of beauty as
12064-430: The works of early Greek philosophers from the pre-Socratic period, such as Pythagoras , who conceived of beauty as useful for a moral education of the soul. He wrote of how people experience pleasure when aware of a certain type of formal situation present in reality, perceivable by sight or through the ear and discovered the underlying mathematical ratios in the harmonic scales in music. The Pythagoreans conceived of
12180-423: The world that is ascribed, for example, to landscapes, paintings or humans. The subjective side, on the other hand, is expressed in sayings like "beauty is in the eye of the beholder". These two positions are often referred to as objectivism (or realism ) and subjectivism . Objectivism is the traditional view, while subjectivism developed more recently in western philosophy . Objectivists hold that beauty
12296-745: The world. In some of the Scandinavian or Nordic countries, more advanced handicrafts form part of the formal, compulsory school curriculum, and are collectively referred to as slöjd in Swedish, and käsityö in Finnish. Students learn how to work mainly with metal, textile and wood, not for professional training purposes as in American vocational–technical schools , but with the aim to develop children's and teens' practical skills, such as everyday problem-solving ability, tool use, and understanding of
12412-550: Was pulchrum ( Latin ). Beauty for ancient thinkers existed both in form , which is the material world as it is, and as embodied in the spirit, which is the world of mental formations. Greek mythology mentions Helen of Troy as the most beautiful woman. Ancient Greek architecture is based on this view of symmetry and proportion . In one fragment of Heraclitus's writings ( Fragment 106 ) he mentions beauty, this reads: "To God all things are beautiful, good, right..." The earliest Western theory of beauty can be found in
12528-423: Was John Locke 's distinction between primary qualities , which the object has independent of the observer, and secondary qualities , which constitute powers in the object to produce certain ideas in the observer. When applied to beauty, there is still a sense in which it depends on the object and its powers. But this account makes the possibility of genuine disagreements about claims of beauty implausible, since
12644-534: Was a typical facial appearance for each. When doing this, he noticed that the composite images were more attractive as compared to any of the individual images. Researchers have replicated the result under more controlled conditions and found that the computer-generated, mathematical average of a series of faces is rated more favorably than individual faces. It is argued that it is evolutionarily advantageous that sexual creatures are attracted to mates who possess predominantly common or average features, because it suggests
12760-452: Was also a method of aesthetic appreciation that could be applied, and recognised, by anyone provided he or she perceived things "directly". In other words, if chokkan was "subjective" or "arbitrary", than it was not "direct" perception at all. The other half of Yanagi's theory of beauty was concerned with the spiritual attitude of the craftsman (as opposed to that of the person appreciating a craft object). For crafts to be beautiful, he said,
12876-419: Was ensured. But even experienced judges may disagree in their judgments, which threatens to undermine ideal-observer theories. Various conceptions of the essential features of beautiful things have been proposed but there is no consensus as to which is the right one. The "classical conception" (see Classicism ) defines beauty in terms of the relation between the beautiful object as a whole and its parts :
12992-507: Was on beauty . The beauty of folk crafts, he argued, lay in: (1) the use of natural materials and "natural" hand-made production; (2) traditional methods and design; (3) simplicity and (4) functionality in form and design; (5) plurality, meaning that folk crafts could be copied and reproduced in quantity, leading to (6) inexpensiveness. Beauty was also found in (7) the fact that folk crafts should be made by anonymous – or "unknown" – craftsmen, and not by well-known named artists. Finally, (8) there
13108-452: Was the division of labour afforded by mechanisation and industrialisation, Yanagi was most opposed to individualism . Change the nature of society, said Morris; change the nature of individualism, said Yanagi, if people wished to have beauty in their lives. Although often denied by Japanese followers of mingei , as well as explicitly by Yanagi himself, his theory of folk crafts would appear to rely, therefore, on Western writings. Certainly,
13224-500: Was the "beauty of health", whereby a healthy attitude during the manufacture of folk crafts led to healthy crafts. In other words, beauty and folk crafts were the product of Japanese tradition – a tradition which he emphasised by saying that mingei should be representative of the regions in which they were produced and make use of natural materials found there. Yanagi's book The Unknown Craftsman has become an influential work since its first release in English in 1972. In it, he examines
13340-457: Was to be found in ordinary and utilitarian everyday objects made by nameless and unknown craftsmen – as opposed to higher forms of art created by named artists. In his first book outlining his concept of mingei , originally published in 1928, he argued that utilitarian objects made by the common people were "beyond beauty and ugliness", and outlined a number of criteria that he considered essential to "true" mingei folk crafts. Yanagi's main focus
13456-493: Was ὡραῖος, hōraios , an adjective etymologically coming from the word ὥρα, hōra , meaning "hour". In Koine Greek, beauty was thus associated with "being of one's hour". Thus, a ripe fruit (of its time) was considered beautiful, whereas a young woman trying to appear older or an older woman trying to appear younger would not be considered beautiful. In Attic Greek, hōraios had many meanings, including "youthful" and "ripe old age". Another classical term in use to describe beauty
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